


The Desert

by Good_Evening



Series: Fear and Loathing [2]
Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Character Death, Horror, Imprisonment, Kleine-Levin Syndrome, Lima Syndrome, M/M, Mpreg, Other, Rape, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-07-16
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-20 08:31:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/885165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_Evening/pseuds/Good_Evening
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's nightmares are taking a great toll on his mind and body. Pitch becomes aware that it's not all his doing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Not the way I had intended for this to go, but the opportunity for sex scenes was too good to resist.

That night, he finds himself aware the second he falls unconscious, just as Pitch had said. That day, he’d been wearier than usual. Everything made him jump, from the children’s squeals to his own shadow. He was worn through with nerves. The peace he’d thought he’d achieve with a little rest evaporates, and he’s left huddled in the antechamber of the cave.

He had forgotten what it was like, down here. Feeble wisps of wind tickle his ear as he steps onto bare granite. Where before, Pitch couldn’t leave him alone for a second, he now stands in silence in an empty grotto. The cages are vacant and still, no breeze to move them, and the light from above scattered dimly. He walks in further, aiming for one of the tunnels, relaxing his staff as he peeks over the balcony of a bridge. Nothing moves for several seconds, but then a curl of darkness slides over a rock. He hears a splashing sound from far below, and calls into the gloom,

_“Pitch?”_

His voice echoes. The pit goes silent, and he urges himself to look deeper. Pitch had _brought_ him here, after all. As he stares into blackness, hovering over the rail, Pitch’s shadow manifests on the far wall. It towers over Jack, slithering through the lights between the darkness.

“Didn’t I tell you, you’d be back?” he starts airily, amused by Jack’s distress. “No magic, no exit, no help; you’re a mess, Jack.”

Jack startles as Pitch ghosts by him, nails drifting across his back. Quivering with rage, he barks into the shadows,

“I’m going to end you, Pitch!”

 _“How?”_ The voice wafts by his ear. “You know where I am, Jack. I would never leave you. But you can’t do anything here, and,” he lifts one of Jack’s arms, pressing against his back, “you won’t do anything out there.”

Jack tries to whirl, but Pitch has him locked touching his chest. He has to control his breathing to keep the fear from seizing him.

“I tell any one of them what you’re doing, here, and you’ll be dead in a heartbeat.”

“Then why haven’t you?” Pitch reminds him, and his strategy falls to pieces. “You don’t remember any of this until you fall asleep, and for as long as I’m around, you will end up here, with me, and no way out. I’m only giving as good as I’ve gotten.”

Jack twists and finds himself freed. He rounds on where Pitch was standing and, finding nothing, screams into the darkness,

“I didn’t do **ANYTHING** to deserve this!”

His wrist is caught and yanked back. He yells in frustration, grappling with the void as it pulls him in. It crawls over him, thousands of tendrils and hands. He can’t breathe. The pressure increases and he’s being swallowed into a voracious heat. Voice muted by a vacuum, lungs burning as fire licks the last breath from his lungs. His thrashing dies out and light bleaches his vision into a tunnel. The last of his effort departing his body, a sudden chill grips his cheeks and he scrambles into it with a final burst.

“There, there.” Strong arms wrap around him and he barely registers sound, gasping too hard for air he doesn’t need. “Shh,”

Pitch strokes his hair and bends his head to rest on Jack’s. His body is freezing compared to the heat from before, and Jack cuddles into it as much as he can, remembering his mother keeping him warm on cold nights. His current predicament notwithstanding, comfort—and any kind of physical contact—are rare. The night before is distanced in his survival state, the nightmare whitewashing his memory. He had been in hell and then removed from it. His savior must have some good intentions.

“Oh,” Pitch sighs quietly into his hair, running his fingers gently through. “No, Jack. Not at all.”

He’s pried from the cold, desperately latching onto it, prolonging the dream before it returns to a nightmare. Pitch holds him at a short distance, just enough that he can look up and see that disdainful smirk. Within seconds, Pitch pulls away, fingers retreating as the heat of the cave climbs again and Jack whines in panic, seeking dead flesh to cool him down.

“Calm yourself.”

Nails glide past his cheek and Jack leans into them, suppressing a groan as they send shivers ricocheting down his spine. He wants it to be over. The memories of the night before flood him and cultivate precious anger. Wrenching from Pitch’s next pass, he spits into the darkness,

“In the end, I’m still a Guardian, and _you’re_ stuck down here, **forever**.”

“Not forever,” Pitch appears as a vague wisp in the middle ground, drifting calmly along the bridge, “for a while, yes, but not forever. This sort of thing happens to many spirits, at some point.”

His eyes flash with sadistic curiosity, “I can’t wait to see what you’ll do to invoke their wrath.”

An arm snatches around Jack’s waist, and he screams as it drags him into the darkness of the pit, passing through the stone like smoke. A voice is hot and raspy in his ear,

“Meanwhile, let’s have some fun, shall we?”

-

Jack is beginning to despise his waking self. Every night for the past two weeks, Pitch has had him cornered, pinned, or reliving his worst memories. Tonight, he’s confined to the chasm in Antarctica, with Baby Tooth broken in his hands. She doesn’t move, no matter how much he shakes and pleads. He can’t stop crying. The dread hanging over him permeates the ice, and he soaks it up helplessly. The nightmares infect him with their reality, spawning from his deepest insecurities; his greatest failures. Now, it’s his own selfishness that rots inside of him; his betrayal of the Guardians and Baby Tooth and every child on Earth.

But that is not the extent of it.

Pitch has not merely relegated himself to simple, inescapable flashbacks. He’s the Nightmare King. He uses everything in Jack against him. He’s digging up things Jack hasn’t even named; shown futures he’d never achieved. He seamlessly integrates his vicious fantasies with Jack’s own fears. They complement each other too wickedly to resist. Jack begins doubting which are his thoughts and which are the feelings Pitch is growing in him.

And something _is_ growing in him. He can feel it.

It’s changing him, to an extent. Where before, he would bite at Pitch at any given chance, resisting and screaming in some instances to his dying breath, he’s now closed in. He’s been trying to go numb as if the memories are a harsh winter and he’s still human; fragile. If he ignores them, perhaps he’ll become hardened to the unwavering assault. But he only finds himself cracking under the pressure of the nightmare. It feeds off of him, and he can feel its strength leak increasingly from his center. In the daylight, he feels tired and confused. His center is fun and should flow endlessly. Instead, pure fatigue drives him to isolation. His cold snaps adopt a deathly tone, hitting towns too hard for children to play outside. He watches them through windows as they curl up at the fire, hiding from him, and wonders what’s happening to drive them away.

He tilts his head back against the ice, drawing his legs up with a shaky exhale.

And that’s another thing. Pitch makes him _feel_ the cold. He’s plunged back into mortality for days, sometimes, suffering the freeze or watching the last of his breath float to the surface, the moon a hazy wash of light on the ripples of the water. His resentment for Manny springs before he can stop it.

How could he have allowed this to happen? How could he let Pitch do something like this to a Guardian, of all spirits? Jack understands that his existence warrants under a full sentence from Manny’s lips, but the total abandonment he feels right now is a dagger in his chest. He can’t move it, can’t treat it. He can only watch the warmth seep out of him, until there’s nothing left.

Abandonment. He had abandoned the Guardians.

He’s trapped in this moment. Pitch has never allowed him his staff, and he’s never had the will to summon more than a few spirals of frost, on his own. He’s powerless, here.

Sometimes, Pitch will leave him for the night. He’ll be stuck in the same memory, with everyone walking through him, with that same sense of despair and loneliness and futility. In these worst moments, he thinks he _wants_ Pitch to appear, not to have a tormentor, but to have someone to recognize him. To see him and care for him in some way, even if it’s just an interest in his punishment, or whatever Pitch is daring to call it. Of course, Pitch knows best about this fear, and the scenarios he conjures are simply too elegant, too visceral to be staged. He’s sure of it.

Jack is living through some of Pitch’s memories, whether Pitch knows that or not.

A few nights ago, he had watched his friends dissolve against a rapid wall of darkness, cities crumbling beneath it as it lurched toward him in a terrifying, all-consuming maw. Living shadows tugged at his armor and quartered him in their mass, slipping into the seams of his flesh and filling his body with hatred. The pain, the terror, the impotence; Jack understands it all, and Pitch understands him.

But, for now, he is slowly succumbing to hypothermia. The life leeches out of his bones, and his lips are a delicate blue. Exhaustion is taking him, and he questions if Pitch prefers waking him in this manner: if a little dose of death every night is what’s eating him more and more, come day. His eyes close and his hands fall to his sides. At these times, he does manage a small, rebellious sense of peace. The only time he’d died in life was saving his beloved sister, and pride for her wells happily in him whenever he goes under. Pitch has never died. He’s only slogged helplessly from one existence into another. He can’t possibly understand this kind of tranquility; this acceptance of the inevitable. Jack’s mission is complete, and his suffering may come to an end.

Pitch manifests to his left and steps out of the shadows with an odd expression. Jack just barely turns his head, a challenging, aloof look in his eyes as death crawls through his limbs. Pitch only watches him die from the corner, subdued, quiet, for once. He’s never seen a peaceful death. He must be curious.

Jack can no longer muster his voice, but lets out a ragged breath, meant to be a humph. If Pitch wants a show, he’ll get it. Jack is entirely serene. As he surrenders to the ice, patterns form under his sleeves and weave across his skin. Thoughts of his sister are most powerful, here. Pitch usually stops him before he can fully form the image, but he doesn’t like to touch them, once they’re there. As he closes his eyes for the last time, this night, he sees his sister crying and stumbling across the ice, frightened, alone, but alive, and he knows he kept her alive, at least that much longer. He can feel Pitch’s gaze as he drifts into a last, contented sleep, and then he wakes.

-

Jack has lost count, but he’s sure it’s been well over a month. It’s one of those rare nights where he slips under with a sense of removal. Whatever happens to him, he can’t exactly stop it. The toll on his mind is starting to relax, at night, though he’s increasingly agitated, outside of his nightmares.

“It’s normal for the balance to reverse, like this. Nightmares can be very difficult to battle, night after night.”

Pitch’s original fire has calmed some, at least that a few nights, now, he’s taken time to speak to Jack candidly, though hatred continues to roil unabashedly beneath most words. But in this instance, he’s almost calm, possessing himself with abnormal composure. His worst tortures, perhaps, have been exhausted, by now. Naturally, Jack no longer lets his hopes up. He’s come fresh from a very heated argument with Bunny, which ended in several shattered eggs and his being thrown out of the Warren with an angry yell. By now, most of the Guardians are aware of the change in him.

They’re attributing it to the stress of the changing seasons. He hasn’t seen Jamie in over a month, after all, and beyond him, there aren’t many other children able to play with him. See him.

The distant thought of saying something to rile Pitch, _Can we get this over with? I’ve got places to be,_ has mostly left his interest. The rage it elicited, the first couple of rounds, the nights of being ravaged until he felt like a piece of meat on the floor, has mostly passed. Instead, he merely looks at Pitch, silent as snowfall while the other establishes the scene.

It’s rather uncreative, Jack thinks blearily as Burgess wavers into being around him, a late Spring night with frost _just_ out of reach. His hands itch in his pockets as Pitch stands beside him, surveying the town jadedly. Jack tests the boundaries, unafraid of the consequences as he begins walking away. How far does the nightmare go? Does the world taper off, or will he never approach the end? His stomach aches and he halts for a moment, throwing a drained glance back at Pitch.

_What?_

Pitch says nothing, brow drawing as Jack wanders away from him. The occasional fearling darts through the wood beyond the houses, to let Jack know he’s watched, but the gloomy, empty town is just the space he needs for a moment to himself. What more can Pitch do? He’s submitted him to every relevant pain and fear available. He can make Jack forget these things, but only for a moment, to keep it fresh and, unexpectedly, he seems to be growing bored of that.

The Wind has not visited him yet in his dreams, and he can’t even hear its voice, down here. His strongest memories of blasting through canyons, buffeting coasts with flash-freezes only manifest in brief swirls of ice crystals. They dance on his palm before melting in the false Spring heat.

Another pang hits his stomach and he stops again, holding his hand to it and throwing the other against the brick wall of an alley. He huddles, wondering if mortality has taken him again, and if this is some sickness he’d had as a child, but no memory comes. He’s alone, in the dark, experiencing a pain he’s never known. Fear licks at his senses, but he brushes it off, fingers digging at his gut as he forces himself forward.

He yelps and doubles over the pavement as something knifes through his belly, puncturing his flesh as he claws at it and whines. His breaths come rushed and sparse as he tries to settle himself against the wall, releasing another weak gasp as the pain scrubs his vision and leaves him tumbling against the bricks. He clutches his belly through his sweatshirt and it’s firm, as if freezing from the inside. After a few more strangled curses, he manages to shift onto his back, and sidles up the wall. The trip leaves him shaking and sore. Hands climbing under the fabric, clutching pleadingly at his stomach, he slows with a quivering, horrified gasp. A subtle, firm roundness greets him, coiled neatly in his abdomen. He gropes it as the pain subsides, staring ahead in blind fear, trembling as he lets it take him.

This doesn’t have the same feel as a memory. This isn’t something Pitch has cooked up. Like his growing bitterness, his weariness, this is now a part of him. He can’t even tell what it is, and it petrifies him.

He gives his stomach a rough massage, hoping to break it up. His nails pierce the skin, but he keeps going, ripping at white flesh and begging for the blood to flow, but none comes. Death has never allowed him that. Only Pitch can make him bleed.

The familiar sensation of hands on his wrists pulls him back into focus, and he jolts, shaking as he looks up. Pitch is crouching in front of him, keeping his squirming arms from doing any more damage. His gaze is pointed at the torn hoodie, where skin has been ground away and blue muscle left bare. Breaths still shudder through it, Jack’s panicked gasps grounding him as he becomes more aware of himself.

“Get it out, get it **_OUT OF ME_** _!!!_ ” He’s screaming without knowing it. Pitch, for once, is surprised by his fear. He comes closer to get a better look, sweeping down as Jack scrabbles away, wrenching at his wrists as they’re collected into one spindly grasp. He sobs as the other hand creeps down to lift his hoodie and inspect, Pitch’s face sporting wonder and confusion. A hot palm lies fully against him so that every tremor is transferred directly into it. Jack wants to calm himself, but can’t stop wriggling. He hates when Pitch touches him. He can’t help it.

The hand withdraws and he jerks away from Pitch’s hard expression. The other steps back and drops his wrists. He goes right back to clawing at himself, and Pitch swoops in again,

“None of that,” he warns. It lacks his usual certainty. He’s floating in open water as much as Jack is. Instinctively, Jack thrashes against him, forgetting the weeks and weeks of torture that taught him too much movement will only warrant more punishment. The hand hovers again over his belly and he closes his eyes, tears droplets of ice and frozen to his face. Carefully, the hand lies atop his cheek, melting the tracks and startling him. A thumb cuts under his jaw and forces him to look forward, and Jack glares earnestly through his terror.

“What did you to me?” he growls.

Pitch looks affronted, like he couldn’t possibly be responsible, but that same doubt flickers in him, and he doesn’t speak. He lends a last peek at the tattered flesh of Jack’s stomach before relenting and donning an intimidating snarl.

“ _Wake up._ ”


	2. Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The nature of Jack's condition is revealed, and Pitch positively blooms.

Over the next few weeks, Jack’s anxiety grows, and so does his sickness. He sleeps more; can’t be bothered to move for days at a time. Unavoidably, he spends more time in the nightmare realm. Pitch’s company is less than reassuring.

On the other hand, this burgeoning, powerful fear is new fodder for Pitch’s torments. He invents mortal diseases, steals from folklore, and grows much darker. But nothing he creates expands far beyond Jack’s own imaginings. Rather, they seem to feed into each other, twining to form new theories about his state. Pitch’s own cluelessness completely unmoors Jack, who no longer has the attention span for grander schemes. The pains come suddenly, and without Pitch’s direction. There is, again, something he has not accounted for.

It’s nearing the fourth month and Jack is unconscious most of the time. His middle distends too far to hide completely, and rides noticeably under his clothes. Pitch’s efforts to wake him die out as they realize Jack _can_ ’t wake up, most of the time. The rare days in which he doesn’t sleep are filled with such overriding apprehension, he spends them sequestered in the Arctic. After several fights with the Guardians, they no longer come calling, and he’s left aching, alone, completely in the dark as to what’s happening to him.

Of course, his belly haunts him only in the nightmare realm, but his veins grow blue and pulse close to his skin with something he can’t define, and he finds himself covered in scratches from ceaseless itching. His nerves are frayed and Pitch does little to help.

Except for tonight. Tonight, he broke down the moment he entered the nightmare, collapsing onto the stone floor after having cried himself to sleep. He weeps openly, here, not bothered to hide his weakness from the Guardians or the children or other lonely spirits. Pitch has seen the worst of him; brought out the worst in him. There can’t be much more to embarrass him.

He can feel that Pitch is nervous to approach. He’s been on-edge, lately, too, alternating between hounding Jack and watching his every move, then disappearing for nights on end. He bears similar signs of exhaustion, accentuated by grim hesitation. He’s not fond of being outdone in his element, but he’s more concerned that something has managed a hold beyond him in his one companion. If Jack dies, now, it entirely defeats having brought him here, in the first place. His suffering is meant to be eternal.

Meanwhile, Jack continues to make a mess of himself on the floor, tears running freely as dull throbs begin again. He hunches and waits for the pain to come—growing, now, so that he feels punched almost to the point of being knocked out. It beats through every part of him in a sluggish, dolorous train. The whole of his body shrieks at him to end it.

He’s not thinking clearly; it’s a dream, after all. It’s not like he’ll even wake up. But still, he throws himself together and heads for the bridge, holding in his gasping sobs and letting the pressure drive him forward. He can feel Pitch come near, hairs standing on the back of his neck as he advances toward the banister. Just one last burst of energy, that’s all he needs. He works his steps into the rhythm of the pangs, half-walking, half-stumbling as he drags himself forward. The stone is cool beneath his hands as he lurches over.

“ **JACK**!”

Arms close around him and he bites and thrashes, body tugged back over the rail and sprawling on the stone bricks. He rips at Pitch’s robe and aims for his face, but his hands are clasped together and forced to still. Fight dying in him, a new wave of pain strikes and he shudders out a pathetic gasp as it courses through him. Pitch’s warmth seems to diffuse it, if only a little, so he huddles into the other’s chest, crouched around his belly, almost protecting it.

The pain ebbs with less focus, shearing only the edge of his consciousness until Pitch’s hands come to rest on his belly.

“Ah,” he jumps, new heat curling where he’s touched. He doesn’t bother deciphering Pitch’s expression. He takes the break in pain for what it is, letting his head fall back and soaking up as much rest as he can. Pitch stares in wonder at his hand on Jack’s belly, feeling dead flesh pulse beneath him and liven at the contact. Unbidden, his hand strokes the soft skin, riding the curve as Jack’s breath hitches.

There.

Where his fingers had lain, a deep, black bruise formed. His hand moves, and the bruise begins to fade. He touches it lightly and it _thrums_. Jack arches involuntarily, mouth falling open the slightest degree as he opens his eyes and summons the courage to see what’s been done to him. Pitch moves reverently, slowly across Jack’s stomach, each quaking inhalation vibrating his arm as bruises emerge and fade.

They seem drawn to him.

As his palm drags over the arc, he sees flecks of darkness trail him. The bruise sways and reforms, following his touch. He’s still; transfixed as he gradually tows the markings into one brackish mass, throbbing excitedly against his fingertips.

He takes a ragged breath, and wonders if this will work.

Jack bows from the ground and lets out a shaky, vulnerable moan.

Pitch wills the sand to move and it _purrs_ for him.

“It’s sand,” he whispers, and he hadn’t realized how hoarse his voice would be. Jack’s fear has taken root and metamorphosed. The sand presses from beneath his skin in tides, riding a mortal heartbeat as Pitch worships the flesh harboring it. Jack’s eyes flutter, released from the pain and clearly feeling something _very different_ , because the way he pushes his abdomen closer to Pitch is unlike anything either of them have encountered.

Jack is growing nightmare sand.

Not polluted dream sand, not a fearling, but an original source. The first in history.

And Pitch _put it there_.

The tremulous laugh that escapes him snaps him back to the present. Jack is writhing and not aware of himself in the slightest. And that, too, is mystifying. The way he leans into his touch, not because of an illusion, but something that Pitch honestly provides. It burns him that he could possibly be soothing someone, let alone a Guardian, but this is Pitch’s. This is his own creation. His smile flickers with childlike wonder and he sees Jack watching him. The boy is conflicted with relief and alarm; Pitch’s most favored method is to lead him on with unbelievable promises. They are, technically, still in a nightmare. He’s afraid of this being taken away. He’s afraid, for once, that Pitch will _stop_ touching him, and the pain will return at full force.

Pitch wants to smirk and draw away like his usual, cruel self, but that would mean leaving this beautiful thing. And, well, he’s not very good at depriving himself of anything he can up and _have_. Something that is, in every sense, _his_.

And Jack _is_ his.

-

Time means very little, down here, but Jack knows he hasn’t been awake for months. Sure enough, he can’t recall the last time he’d appeared and cursed himself for falling asleep in the first place. Not that his waking life is anything to brag about—he hasn’t spoken to anyone in half a year, up there, but at least it’s not time spent with Pitch and the aberration draining him. It can feel how he despises it, drinking in the negativity; nourished by it, and of course that only causes it to _grow_. Jack is helpless in his hatred of it, and it devours that, too.

Body withered, his stomach bulges unnaturally, the sand crawling inside and drawing sinister trails across him. It’s gotten bolder, tracking Pitch’s movements and forcing Jack into some awful compulsion to seek the other’s company, if Pitch ever leaves him alone. And of course, he doesn’t.

He’d ended up, after the nights of abuse and rape, in Pitch’s bed, of all places, essentially strapped to his side for fear of the pain that awaits when he’s left for even an hour.

Every last grain spikes against the surface of his skin, rushing in all directions and clamoring to get back to the touch. Pitch has assured him that it isn’t is fault—if he tries to call any sand near, it reacts even worse.

It’s extremely volatile, and covetous.

The nightmares that once freely roamed the cave are now kept at bay by Pitch’s own threat. When they near Jack, something about them positively enrages the sand within him and he grows slack, unable to scream, unable to move, the pain too great to comprehend. Fear consumes him and the sand seems to feed off of that in defense, growing more quickly, but at the cost of Jack’s company. Lately, Jack has made the friendliest company. Pitch has never had someone grip him so desperately, begging him to stay; fearing what happens when the Boogeyman _leaves_.

He must admit, he’s a mite jealous of the sand for its ability to torment Jack so purely and effectively, but his pride and awe override that, and he’s simply too excited to see how the sand will be, once it’s retrieved. However it is retrieved.

At the moment, Jack is curled against him, and he rests his hands on his swollen belly, stroking it with warm fingers. Every now and then, he receives a little shiver for his efforts as Jack relaxes in his arms. He’s come to think of these, unexpectedly, as treats. No one has ever needed anything from him so honestly, so openly. Jack bares all because there’s nothing left to hide, and indulges in what Pitch gives him, Pitch thinks, because he’s never been worshipped so wholly, or at all. So whenever he manages a sigh, or a stretch, or a nuzzle for his expenditures, he nearly glows from the recognition, from the desire. Reasonably, it excites him, and he pries out as much as he can get away with.

Technically speaking, he’s currently entwined with Jack’s subconscious, and it’s superbly easy to unclothe.

“ _Pitch_ ,” Jack murmurs, half-asleep and utterly content.  Pitch sucks in a breath. He loves his name, loves everything about himself, but he loves hearing it, and hearing it said so… he can’t define it. He doesn’t particularly care to.

The sand ebbs leisurely through Jack when he touches him like this, almost massaging him. He bends sleepily at insistent touch and allows Pitch to move him as he wills. The first nip to his collarbone doesn’t stir him, but the fingers gently rubbing his hips elicit a few stretches, a pleasured sigh.

Pitch does play dirty. Sometimes, he keeps the memories of their earlier relationship outside of the chamber. He hears them bay in the darkness and claw furiously at the door, Jack’s conscious just beyond reach. This part, Jack’s fear and the ethereal body holding it, is his, and while at first he’d planned only on reaping what he could of the harvest, he finds himself all too pleased just having Jack near, regardless of the presence in him that attaches to Pitch on instinct.

He pushes between Jack’s legs, sliding his knee along the mattress and dragging his fingers from Jack’s ankle, up along his calf and the inside of his knee. They splay and ghost across his thighs, making them quiver as Jack unconsciously accepts him. He hums as Pitch lowers to his belly, resting his head on the tight, round bump and listening for the throb. It builds as he nears and without thinking, he kisses Jack, letting the bruises cast like love bites as he draws away.

Jack is looking down at him, stunned aware. Fear creeps into him and the sand roils in excitement.

He kicks at the sheets, trying to get away. Pitch grabs at him, but he stumbles off the bed and holds his arms, scowling down at his body in disgust. Pitch finds himself forgetting that Jack actually hates him.

-

He’s not sure if Jack is weaker, or damaged, or simply apathetic, but the endless nightmare has taken on a decidedly dreamy note. They spend days at a time in bed. He allows Jack the peace of dreamless sleep, curling selfishly around his subconscious and keeping watch over the fear that always permeates it. Torture has lost its pizzazz, and he finds himself uncomfortable, leaving Jack alone for too long. He’ll slip out a few minutes at a time, inspecting his nightmares and directing them as best he can, before the itch starts. Anxiety prickles under every thought, and only grows until he can crawl back into their room.

And when had he begun to think of it as _their_ room?

It may be his house, so to speak, but it is Jack’s dream, and a part of him. Taking up roost so completely that even Jack’s memories become features has worn through his animosity. He’s not at all bored, but there is very little left to hate as passionately as he once did. Inevitably, once he’s spent months effectively comforting and protecting someone, he’s grown attached.

What confuses him most, beyond the strange context of their relationship, is that Jack seldom fights him. At first, he gleaned nearly all enjoyment from Jack’s stubbornness, from the struggle that would only give him reason to press harder, to break more. Not that Pitch Black has ever required fair justification for his actions. But each of his punishments would crash against Jack’s will so beautifully and painfully, much satisfaction was derived from that, rather than the brutality, itself. Truth be told, Pitch has not been directly violent for most of this aberration, but the horrors he’s inflicted have tamed as Jack’s condition has progressed, and he’s realized slowly, so as not to upset himself, that he’s become entirely complacent, even happy, in Jack’s company.

Which is far from his mind at the moment, because he is quite comfortably embedded in the other spirit, and Jack’s responses are driving him mad.

Satyrs have smaller libidos. Jack has not cursed him, or even spoken consciously to him, in several days, but all of Pitch’s advances have been greeted with such enthusiasm, he’s sporting bruises on every body part.

The only reason they’d left the bed in a week, he muses, is when they began drawing so much blood, it nearly caked between them, and Jack’s thighs were almost too much of a mess to be attractive.

At the moment, he can’t imagine how they could ever be unattractive, but he also can’t remember how long they’ve been fucking each other, and every time Jack yanks him down into another clashing kiss, grunting and then mewling when Pitch hits _just there_ , _don’t stop_ , he has to recalibrate and remind himself to not fuck him too hard. He has bruises on his own hips, lined up neatly with Jack’s bony pelvis. Over time, it’s become easier to tell the difference between the sand and contusions. It travels energetically, though now more confined to Jack’s belly. When he rests his hands on it, it darts under the skin and curls with excited personality, and what it does to Jack is simply criminal.

Jack touches him, too, now.

It’s never for very long—nearly always impulsive, but he carries scratches on his arms, and disallows them to fade. Jack’s fingers will skitter across his back, clenching, pulling him in tighter; deeper. And every now and then, if Jack loses himself just that perfect amount, he’ll moan Pitch’s name, and whisper pillow talk to him. Understandably, Pitch has never confronted such a situation; he’s the goddamned Boogeyman. Jack’s insistent gripping and pulling positively undo him, but having someone speak so tenderly is an uncomfortably new ordeal.

“ _Pitch,_ ”

His breath hitches and his hand gently tugs Jack’s leg a bit higher. He wants more, feels he’s never been quite this satisfied in his life, and it can never be enough. Jack can never give him enough, but it’s divinely rewarding, just the same.

“ _… Mm! There…_ ”

Jack’s whispers are so quiet. Who does he think he’s fooling? It’s only the two of them. Pitch thinks of him screaming and lets out a pitiful whining moan. He wants many things, but he’s so sure that Jack will grant them. All he has to do is wait, and they’ll come.

“ _Ah. Hands…_ ” Jack gulps, fingers knotting over Pitch’s shoulders.

Pitch caresses his belly and receives a gymnastic arch. His gasps become loud and too raspy. Can one become dehydrated by a dream? Pitch prays for the volume to increase. Though it’s much easier to reap screams with fear, he could see himself forming an addiction to this. Unraveling Jack’s defenses enough to obtain shrieks through pleasure will be an accomplishment unlike anything he’s done in his life. He’s never made such a pleasing companion.

“ _Pitch, yes, ye… harder. Yes. Yeesssss…!”_ Jack moans openly, wantonly, body and sand throbbing and cold where Pitch touches him. Pitch can’t control his own voice as he obliges, grunting as he gropes the sand spilling under Jack’s skin, too hazy and distracted to see the patterns and fronds build and thicken like ice.

“ _Don’t... stop… Don’t… now. Now…!_ ”

Jack comes and it’s beautiful. Pitch’s mind blanks as he watches every twitch, absorbs each sigh and shudder. The sand jerks and spasms from the excitement, then rests obediently, warm beneath his fingers. He’s coming, too, completely unprepared and unexpected. He collapses to his elbow, panting into Jack’s collarbone as he ejaculates, pulsing inside and pushing deeper, groaning as Jack moves his legs to pull him in even more.

“Ah, _yes! Ah_ …” It’s his own voice, condensing on Jack’s chest and trickling down in pools of sweat. He stays locked inside, where the tides of the sand gyrate around him, until the oversensitivity forces him out with a grimace. Jack moans and yanks him back on top of him, come drizzled between his thighs. Pitch wants to laugh from the shock, from the elation of being wanted so honestly. He doesn’t feel trapped or fooled; Jack is far too advanced in this relationship to think he could possibly deceive him. Pitch has tortured that out of him.

“That was… oh, wow. Did you feel it?”

Pitch doesn’t move. He’s too confused. Maybe he’s dreaming.

His hand is softly moved to Jack’s stomach, where the sand reacts just as happily as before.

“There,” the tone is so warm and tired, “Did you feel that, inside?”

Forgetting how to speak is the basis of at least a thousand nightmares, but for the life of him, Pitch is unable to summon the will to respond. Jack stills, and his hand slides away. Pitch retreats, sitting over Jack on his knees, still too stricken to even frown properly. Jack isn’t even anxious. If his pleasantries are rejected, he’s already accustomed to pain. What’s odd is that he spoke, in the first place.

“Well?” he’s challenging him; testing him. The mischief that is Jack Frost has been rekindled beyond caustic backtalk. Pitch doesn’t have him shackled and gagged. In fact, he’s feeling rather contained, himself.

After a long minute, waiting for the illusion to fade, he replies evenly,

“I did.”

Jack smiles, stretching his arms above his head and basking in sex. Every movement reeks of it. He might not even be aware of it.

And Pitch wants him more than anything, _again_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that it was obvious this would have something to do with mpreg, hence the tags, but that's not all you're in for.


	3. Safety in Numbers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And Pitch wants him more than anything, again.

Pitch wonders how Jack feels when he is awake. It’s been months since the last waking incident, and when he had sent his mares to investigate, they found the boy curled in a tiny alcove, tunneled through a chasm in Antarctic ice. His belly appeared bruised and Pitch was elated to learn that the sand, though its presence was exaggerated in the nightmare, had managed a corporeal form. Even dream sand did not begin so strongly.

He finds it harder and harder to part from Jack. A persistent itch flies under his skin and clouds his mind. Once he leaves the chamber, the need to return has him sweating from the effort within minutes. And when he does return, Jack nearly attacks him once he’s close enough to the bed. It’s beautiful. His life has never been so satisfying.

At this moment, the need to be near Jack has never been stronger. As he shakily instructs his meager army, he feels the attachment screaming at him until his ears are ringing from the force. It’s never been so loud.

He’s staring up from the floor, trying to gather himself after having blacked out. His hands can’t stop moving and his legs fumble to stand. The mares have mostly left and he feels _fear_. The connection is so stretched, it _screams_ at him. He can’t do anything to resist it. He knows only pain, as if his organs have been ripped out of his belly and pulled between his ribs. It’s as if every sensation of being walked through has multiplied into something monstrous, and his mind zeroes in on one thing only.

Jack must be safe.

He starts to forget his form as he barrels through the cavern toward their room. Shadows fray into tendrils and his fingers elongate, darkened. His features sharpen and then collapse, until he is nothing but his fear and his pain and the doors are flung open to an empty bed. The room is silent, but for his panting, and there is no warm body to greet him with desire.

Whether the shriek comes from rage or despair, or makes no sound at all, Pitch’s existence flares into one maelstrom of anguished fury.

He can’t leave yet.

Not like this.

The Guardians would kill him on sight if he tried to retrieve him and Jack, Jack has probably gone to them. Jack has left and the sand and his companion and his _one chance_ at anything meaningful in this desolation are _gone_. His form shifts into amorphous horrors, beasts which cannot weep, but his howls and panting breaths, shaking chest, all drive him further from reason.

The lifeless void, the darkness; his legacy, what had once been his comfort, is now filled with his lost joy. With hope. With Jack. He can still smell him. The mares enter the room for the first time in nearly a year and understand his fearsome growls.

They can reach the surface.

They can do what he cannot.

 

* * *

 

North found him crashed into a mountainside. The wind had beaten the snow into an unnatural storm, trying to free him. The fire is too warm and before he can move, the room dims. Panic thrusts his heart into overdrive, but as soon as he gets to his elbows, a hand pushes him gently back down. The yetis are on standby, nervous and too big in the ancient doorway.

_“… tica… the chasm… fever.”_

He has a fever? He can’t access his powers. He can barely keep his eyes open, the lethargy is so bad. All he wants is to sleep, but something terrible has happened. He can’t sleep. He can’t move. Perhaps he should be terrified, but he’s only frustrated; impotent. Sensing the staff in the corner, his panic calms a bit, but he’d like the energy to at least ask what was going on. If he just closed his eyes, maybe he could refocus. Maybe he could find something familiar in the darkness.

His shoulder is lightly shaken and his eyes drag slowly up to North’s stern face.

“You’ve got to stay awake, da?”

Tooth is muttering to her birds. They dart out the window and titter fearfully. She looks to North,

“They’re looking for him, but it might take a few hours.”

Jack knows when North is swearing, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. A heavy weight sinks into the bed and the furs drag him nearer to the vortex. North’s girth occupies the entire foot of the mattress, and normally Jack would find such company invigorating, but at the moment, he only feels sick. The closer North comes, the worse he feels. The other Guardian understands his pained expression and keeps a casual distance. Jack manages to get his elbow under him before his neck falls to the side of the bed, stomach searing under the force of his muscles. The more aware of the pain he becomes, the greater its impact. It keeps him awake when every fiber in his body begs him to sleep.

He tries to speak,

“… _ss… What’s_ happening?”

His voice is a hissing grunt. Trying to recollect the past few days has turned into a nightmare. He remembers Jamie’s, fighting with the Guardians, and sealing himself off from the pressure. What pressure? His stomach roils and he sobs, readying for dry heaves. North is beside himself. Jack can’t even support his own weight.

“Have you met any Fae, lately?”

“Did you eat something?”

Jack shakes his head and a hand works down to clutch his belly. He needs to show them the bruise. It can’t just be a wound, there’s _something_ wrong with him, but the thought of exposing it freezes him. He’s never felt such an immense emotion so suddenly. The weight of the shame, fear, and despair crushes him back into the bed. His eyes water and he curls protectively around his stomach, and only then does the pain alleviate. He must hide it. They can’t know. Perhaps that says something of its nature.

“Jack, where were you before Antarctica?”

Controlling his breathing has never been so difficult. Slipping words in between the pang requires a level of finesse he never thought he’d learned. The pain is too familiar for him to find any comfort.

“ _Fighting_ … with Bunny. He kicked me out.”

North’s face draws into a frown,

“He has not seen you in almost a year. Do you mean Jamie?”

Jack’s at a loss. His eyes widen from the force of his pain as he tries to remember, grasping at his memory only to end in a void. All he remembers is darkness. He couldn’t have slept for a year. Guardians hardly sleep to begin with.

Tooth sees his panic and confusion and draws closer, kneeling by the bed and trying to hold his hand.

The moment she touches him, he watches his skin scorch and blacken, consumed by fire.

He screeches and finds the energy to fling himself back towards the wall with a massive _thump_ , huddling around the wound and sobbing as he soothes the burns away. But when he looks down, the flesh is unmarred. Her panicked words float around his head, the echo of the pain making them difficult to comprehend.

She keeps her distance, this time, but the thought of the pain makes him quail. He cowers at the wall, hunched and shaking. He can’t remember anything. He wants to speak of his pain, but distrust overwhelms him. How had she hurt him so? Rubbing at the pristine flesh until it’s red, he tries to figure out his escape. The staff can be left. They wouldn’t hurt it, and he can’t seem to access his powers, anyway. The smallest intention feels like a knife sliding through his kidney. He has to minimize the pain and escape.

He must look like a caged cat. North and Tooth are wary of him and speak slowly,

“Jack, were you in Antarctica for a year?” She tries so hard to look motherly, to look caring and unconcerned. But he knows her fear. He can sense it. It gives him the courage to respond, if only with a shake of his head.

“Where did you go after the Warren?”

His mouth open and closes. He briefly registers the concept of tears as they cool his cheeks, but his existence centers around his pain, his confusion. This is all a misunderstanding. He’d been at Bunny’s only a few days before, and the Guardians don’t often speak to one another. Bunny must not have told them. His logic is enough to strengthen his voice, but the pangs in his stomach choke his words,

“Ant.. Antarctica. But it was yesterday. I was just tired. I’ve been so tired, lately,”

That piques their interest. North’s tone is gruff, dark,

“Have you had nightmares?”

He shakes his head. He can’t remember anything. Each time he falls asleep, he wakes less rested; weaker. Powers that had once come easily sputtered and snuffed out; his core has gone stagnant, unnaturally quiet. He can’t feel it around the pain.

Thinking of all this is exhausting. The pain seems alive and whips him for his exposition. He needs to escape, but can hardly get himself sitting up. Even if it was to the closet, the dark corridor, he needs a place to rest. He needs to hide himself because the heat and light and concern of his friends are all driving him mad; burning him, even. He feels like he’ll evaporate under all this pressure. Unaware of their effect on him, Tooth and North attempt to near a last time, and something in Jack _roars_.

He lurches across the room to the window, a blessed way out. The panes are heavy and his grip sweaty and weak. The cool breeze that greets him starts to lift him from his pain, from their company, but as he starts to crawl out the sill, acid seems to cast over his back.

Every pore on his body flares with blistering heat. Millions of needles spike him from all sides and he goes limp and quiet under the assault. His eyes are wide and flushed with terror. North surrounds him and tries to gather him into his arms, but Jack finds one last reserve of energy and flings himself out of the embrace, scrabbling out the window before he could contemplate the drop. But it couldn’t matter. Nothing is more painful than what he had just been forced to endure.

The rush of wind around him cools his boiling flesh, but the ground is fast approaching. He should have gathered the staff after all. Though, he doesn’t have to worry about that. Somehow he knows he won’t die; that whatever this pain is, it’s determined to keep him breathing.

The ground stops, but he can’t feel the wind that must be holding him.

Rather, he feels something soft and warm, pulling him up the side of the fortress. Sand. Dream sand. The glare of gold off the tiny dunes is nearly blinding, yet the way his limbs sink into it is comforting; familiar. It draws him up to a terrace where North and Tooth are waiting, and the pain begins throbbing once more.

 

* * *

 

Sandy recognizes his whines and keeps him suspended on the cloud, just out of reach of the other two, and silently asks what has happened.

Something is clearly wrong. He nearly drops Jack at the realization, pulling his dream sand close from the threat. He can feel its slow pollution.

He’s seen nightmares trotting through the countryside, wild and unbridled, but he hasn’t felt such a potent energy in several years. It intends to consume him. For Jack’s own good, he drops him into a snow bank a few yards from North, releasing his whips to scour the mountain, but the moment he loses contact with the boy’s flesh, he can see it, and his stomach drops out from the dread.

There, where Jack’s neck and legs had touched him, black grains swirl anxiously among gold. He reconverts most of them, but sequesters a small pile to show to Tooth and North. This could not bode well.

 _“ **JACK**!”_ Their unison screams drag his whips to the edge of the terrace, where Jack has tried to climb over the ledge. The boy’s shrieking cries pierce their skulls as North yanks him back, but no soothing words will help him. Finally surrendering to his screams, North carries him inside and drops him in the bed, locking the door once everyone has joined them.

“Tooth, cabinet. Front of window. I get door.”

She sets to work pushing and Sandy helps, his worry deepening. Jack has been trying to kill himself, in essence. And there is nothing they can do to stop him but cage him.

With Jack quarantined, Sandy makes to leave, but North shakes his head and pats a chair across from where Jack lies panting. Sandy makes eye contact for a moment, and the boy’s glare is so powerful, he nearly stumbles in midair. Only one other person has openly showed such animosity. With Jack’s own wildness, the fury turns his Fae appearance feral. It sends a chill down Sandy’s spine. Within a second, Jack has curled back in on himself with an almost soundless whine, but the hatred has burned quite clearly into his mind.

With that thought fresh, he exposes the new black sand, incubated in his own glass. He pours it onto the table and sighs from relief at the separation. Eager as he is to reclaim this missing part of himself, that Jack had the ability to steal it is a thousand times more sinister.

“Pitch.” North murmurs, and Tooth’s expression is grave.

“Could he have gotten out so soon?”

Sandy shakes his head. He hadn’t felt the Nightmare King’s presence since he’d been sealed in the cavern. Though, that says little of other possibilities.

“I do not like this. Pitch cannot do this. Is something else.”

Sandy’s exasperation builds. He mimes his owns methods of communicating, of sending messages and emotions through Jack’s dreams. Tooth’s hand covers her mouth, but North only huffs,

“He has been gone for year,”

“He was sleeping. And we didn’t see much of him, before that.”

North quiets at her interjection, then lowers his head.

“… We let this happen. Can we do nothing?”

Sandy mimes to keep him awake for as long as possible. Tooth flutters nervously,

“Forever? He has to sleep, eventually, and he’s barely conscious as is!”

Jack watches them from North’s bed, barely able to comprehend the words as they spike his conscious over and over again. The pain is not as consuming with their distance, but that itching he’s felt, that’s gnawed gashes into his belly from constant irritation, peaks in him and begs that he return to the dream sand. If not that, then rest. This whole evening has driven him half-dead from exertion. If he could only sleep, then the pain would leave. He closes his eyes and feels it ebb beneath his flesh with the tide of his blood. The darkness of the room, the lack of fire and covered windows, lull him into the pull of the current. It massages his skin, as though thin fingers are working the strain from his flesh. His body sinks into the mattress as the darkness grows and his muscles lose all strength.

He senses something familiar, though he can’t quite place it, and feels himself descending toward it. If only the voices would quiet, he might find some peace; might find what he’s missing.

_That’s it, Jack. You’re so good,_

Those words.

He’s stunned by the wave of revulsion that overcomes him. It’s beyond the influence of the pain. He turns onto his side and heaves, instantly gaining the attention of his friends.

The need to escape returns in full, but their faces instead inspire yearning, and he clutches desperately at Tooth’s feathers. His thoughts are being ripped in too many directions at once. He can barely feel the hands on his face and the pounding in his head deafens any pleading voices.

But he speaks the words he’s been begging for the past year, unaware that this will be the first time he’s made a sound.

“ ** _Get_** _… **it** … **out**!”_

He’s rewarded with their confusion and his own unfathomable pain, but he’s remembered those words at least and clings to them as the last hold on his sanity. He feels more than sees the nightmare sand creep under the door to the balcony outside, and succumbs to the weight of his fear.

 

* * *

 

Somehow, Pitch manages the energy and the form to scream at this new half-formed nightmare, this latest addition to his misery.

“ **YOU NEARLY HAD HIM**. **JUST FIVE SECONDS AND THIS WHOLE THING WOULD HAVE BEEN OVER**.”

He rips her apart and feels his strength grow as she disperses amongst the rest of his sand.

Just a hair more convincing, if he’d given it more time, perhaps this plan would have succeeded. He can feel himself growing sloppier. His thoughts increasingly consist not of language and reason, but pure instinct and emotion. Nearing the sealed entrances to the cavern, he spies more impurities in his desperation. More weaknesses in the Earth’s crust. If he could keep to the shadows, above ground... His time is running out. If Jack had managed to tell them anything, had any lucidity in his dozing, he could have revealed the whole thing. Pitch would never know. His world is in shambles.

Jack is most likely being closely guarded. He wanders from shadow to shadow at lightning speeds, winding his amorphous body around the pillars and darting up to glance at the cracks in the ceiling. It’s his own version of pacing. Once, when he was pacing their chamber, Jack had called tiredly from the bed,

_“You look like a caged cat.”_

His hands close around an imaginary waist. Jack’s thinner than air but not nearly as empty. Elegant fingers that had rested on a cool cheek, held open pale thighs, are now elongated and cruel. He can’t touch Jack without hurting him. Perhaps he never could, and that shouldn’t be terrifying in the slightest; should be some grand confirmation of his existence and place in the world. He is the Boogeyman. This form is second nature, but he can still picture Jack recoiling in disgust, trying to fight the many nebulous limbs clawing him forcibly back into bed. This is the only place where he can have more. Where he can keep Jack’s memories subdued and live the life that wasn’t intended for him.

It is his nature as much to take as it is to frighten. Nothing has been given him in this life except this despair. He might have earned it, but that only makes it more toxic. By all rights, he never “earned” Jack. He simply took. And he will take again.

This prison can easily be broken. It’s the issue of moonlight on the surface, of fairies or dreamsand spying him. He manages a corporeal form, the edges of his body fading like ink as he glares up at one long fissure, a scant thread of sunlight shining through. His eyes glow with it; defiant. Hunger for fear is different; makes him leaner; more cunning. Now, he just feels tossed into the storm. A spirit can go without a lot of things, but that does not mean it’s meant to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long hiatus is long. But exciting things are happening! Next chapter should come more quickly than the last, or maybe I'm just a liar with illusions. Hm. We'll have to see.

**Author's Note:**

> Nice bump, Jack.


End file.
